BWP

Where's this disdain for ASL suddenly coming from? Yes, it has a big rulebook. Many RPG systems have bigger books, and are less well organised. I don't think that anyone who can properly digest (say) the RQ3 rules would have any trouble learning the ASL rules. Most of the rules in that big rulebook are "special cases" and only a subset of them are ever in use at any one time .... I play ASL all the time (and have contributed, in small ways, to its design) and am happy to discuss it with anyone who wants to learn more about it -- in a more appropriate forum than this thread, of course. http://www.multimanpublishing.com/Products/tabid/58/CategoryID/4/Default.aspx

I never said that I was "expecting" anything. I was commenting on how useful (or not) I thought that particular die would be on my gaming table, and I gave my reasons for it. Surely I don't need to justify my comments to you or to anyone else? I never said that I was talking about your Glorantha -- I explicitly stated what I would be doing in my game. You're entitled to think that. I think (from the discussions that I've seen here) they've rejected almost all of them. (IMO RQ3 was a clear improvement over RQ2 in pretty much every important respect, and the tack that RQG has taken just utterly baffles me.) It doesn't matter; there's room enough for both of us and more besides. [My initial thoughts were that I would run RQG with a lot of house rules imported from RQ3 (and my RQ3 already had a lot of house rules of its own!). Now I'm thinking that I'll probably run an even more customised RQ3 with a lot of stuff imported from RQG. As long as we're all having fun, who cares, right?]

More likely they're expecting it to be used as a marker. "What SR is it now?" The Hit Location D20 is pretty useless IMO. Firstly it's only useful for fighting humanoids. Secondly they've left off the missile location table. (Yeah, yeah, I know ... RQG doesn't use the missile hit location table. Yet another RQ3 improvement that was dumped for no good reason. My games of RQG will have the missile locations.)

The RQ2 rules explicitly state that Fireblade was an active spell because it was so powerful (presumably in comparison to other battle magic spell combinations). So really it's just there to stop the game from getting unbalanced. The only problem with that is that it was nonsense; the balancing factor for Fireblade was the POW cost. In actual play Fireblade wielders were rare because of the cost, and because other combat spells (primarily Bladesharp) gave better "bang for the buck" in most situations (and were typically easier to get). Fireblade was the spell you kept up your sleeve for "special situations" (like fighting gorp) -- ideally it was kept in a spell matrix, not in your head. Also, to be honest, I'm pretty sure that we usually ignored the "lose it if you take damage" part of the spell description, although it's been an awful long time since I played a game using the RQ2 rules and I can't really remember any specifics. Clearly this was realised for RQ3, when no spirit (or divine) magic was classed as "active". There doesn't seem to me to be any sensible reason for RQG to follow RQ2 here and not RQ3 (other than the new game's inexplicable reluctance to adopt any improvements from RQ3, of course).

The other problem with electronic tools is that every house rule you implement makes the tool less useful to you (unless the tool is designed to be highly configurable, which I would doubt).

I think the original question was perfectly fair and reasonable, but the responses along the lines of "just dive in and explore at your own pace" are pretty reasonable too. Glorantha is and always has been a complex place, and always has been revealed to us in bits and pieces, often completely overturning what we thought we knew. For example, my first exposure to Glorantha was ca. 1981. We had the RQ2 rules and Cults of Prax, and that was it. We had heard of the boardgame White Bear & Red Moon but we'd never seen a copy. The version of Glorantha that we played back then was ... kinda vague. Players had Mistress Race troll characters and Dragonewt characters and why not? No-one knew any different. Trolls were just big ugly primitives until Trollpak came along a couple of years later and made us realise just how wrong we were. We just took it on board and adjusted our game to suit the new material. Now, that doesn't really excuse the new rules from mistakes and omissions, but I think the more obscure stuff you can just roll with and make up your own mind about, while the less-obscure puzzles (like the nonsensical parrying discussion) is just mechanical stuff and will get sorted out, one way or another, fairly quickly. All of that being said: I think any GM interested in exploring Glorantha would be well-served by investing in whatever out of print material he can lay his hands on (just keeping in mind the original publication date as a context for how "correct" the information is); and for solutions to mechanical questions, get hold of a copy of the RQ3 Deluxe rules and do a contrast-and-compare. Mechanically the RQ3 rules were a vast improvement over the RQ2 rules in pretty much every respect that's important and IMO abandoning most of that is one of the more serious flaws in the RQG rules. (Wherever you still have questions ... just house-rule it. The core BRP system is logical enough that mechanical answers are easy enough to come up with on your own.)

I guess no-one can stop you from thinking so, but you're wrong. Yes it is (the monster descriptions part that is). Unless your FRPG design very specifically and explicitly tells you that all of your characters are (and will forever) be human, and that no such thing as a non-human exists, and that you will never, ever be expected to enter into combat with anything that isn't another human -- then your design is not complete. I guess I could be mistaken, but I've always operated under the assumption that Glorantha contains several sentient species, many of which are not very human-like at all; furthermore, adventuring in Glorantha might even require that you encounter and engage in combat with all manner of beasties (in addition to other humans and other non-humans). Am I wrong in that assumption? A core rulebook that is operating as a single complete volume does not need to include everything about everything. It should, however, give you at least a sample of everything. Sample lands, sample critters, sample local political situation, sample cults, whatever. Other books will expand according to whatever their particular focus is. I'm not saying that it's wrong for RQG to require other volumes; but per what I've written above, I think it would be very unwise for the game to not make that clear to the potential purchaser.

If only people didn't respond to serious comments with fatuous generalisations. Oh well. "Many games"? Well, there's been a couple I suppose. There have been many more published in the last 30 years that generally only required one book; of course all publishers want you to buy more than one, but only a handful have ever made it a pre-requisite. And someone new (or relatively new) might not even know about those prior works. The question is what does the cover of RQG tell you about needing to buy more books. If the answer is "nothing" then it's a potential source of customer complaint. Since I haven't studied the book in any detail, I honestly don't know the answer to the question -- I may be worrying about an issue that doesn't exist. Smart-arse responses like the above simply aren't helpful. "Clearly communicated" where? I'm not talking about a potential buyer scouring these forums, I'm talking about a potential buyer who sees the printed book for the first time in a shop and who is thinking about buying it. If he/she does, takes it home, cracks it open and starts going through it, only to discover that there are other books that must be purchased also to make the game complete -- well, that person may be a trifle peeved. How does that help Chaosium? Of course, if the covers of the book adequately inform the potential purchaser about the expected commitments -- then they have no-one to blame but themselves if they don't like it but go ahead and buy it anyway. I'm certainly not advocating or recommending a sticker that says "WARNING you must read our online forums before deciding to buy this book"!

Thank you!

In case it wasn't already clear, as the OP of this thread I want to make it clear that at no point did I introduce "price" or "value for money" or any sort of "economic" factor into the discussion. I will be buying RQG as soon as I can obtain the printed edition. (PDF only products do not interest me unless they are relatively small, because I will want to print them out.) (For that matter I'm still waiting to buy 13G and the Glorantha Sourcebook!) The only criticism along those lines that I would make is that I'm not sure that the RQG volume sufficiently emphasises that it is not "complete in one volume". Now I'm sure we're all familiar with Certain RPG Games that only "work" once you have purchased a minimum number of rulebooks, but so far as I am aware those Other Games make it very clear that just buying one of the books will not get you very far. I understand completely why RQG has been spread over multiple volumes and I have no inherent problem with that approach; but I don't think that we want a newcomer to the game who sees it sitting on a shelf and grabs it wants to get any unpleasant surprises once he sits down to start reading it. I also think that comments along the lines of "if you haven't bought it already then you're not a true fan and we don't need you around here" are grossly over-the-top and a very good way of making sure people don't get involved in the game. I'm not interested in "should RQG even exist?" discussions, and I'm even less interested in "if you don't want to join our club we don't want you as a member anyway" discussions.

"Surprisingly little", you mean. It's not looking promising. Given that the designer has based it on his "wide and varied experience" that seems to have consisted of only ever playing the game one way and not paying attention to people who played it a different way ... well, my RuneQuest will definitely vary. Poor choice IMO. Eh. Potato, tomato. If Sorcery is ANYTHING like RQ3 Sorcery, then it will be a profound failure. I want a Sorcery system that works. So ... I can't seem to work out how to split a quote box down into separate statements. What am I missing?

OK, there's a handful of stuff that was included. Out of all the possible stuff that was included, "a handful" is not exactly a ringing endorsement. Some of the omissions are just silly, veering into the outright stupid (YMMV, obviously). Deliberately making big monsters more easy to kill doesn't enhance the heroism, it reduces it. "I killed Bigclub!" is not so big a boast if any fool can do it. The RQG rules were designed to make RQ2 supplements fit in more easily? No-one gave us those concessions when RQ3 was published (and a lot of the RQ2 supplements were still readily available in stores)! -- it was convert-it-yourself-or-too-bad. And what about making the RQ3 supplements fit in more easily? (Granted, not quite so many of them ... I'd take Griffin Mountain over Griffin Island any day of the week, but where's the RQ2 Strangers in Prax? etc. etc.) I don't honestly care about the "convertability" of stuff, and I've been adapting RQ2 NPCs into RQ3 rules on a regular basis for a very long time, and only very rarely found it too inconvenient to cope with. It's a very weak argument for retrograding hit points etc. Obviously, tastes vary and opinions differ. I'm cool with that. I'm glad that advancing RQG mechanics (and yes, I mean that in the sense that I think some of the RQG mechanics decisions are retrogrades-in-a-negative-sense) so that they look more like RQ3 than RQ2 will be a relatively low-effort exercise, because there's no question that it's an exercise that I'll be undertaking.

Just a musing. This is in NO WAY intended as a diatribe againt the design of RQG (well, maybe a tiny one) which I intend to purchase when it exists in physical form (so this is me saying I've not read the PDF). (I should also say that I have no experience whatsover with MRQ2, Mythras, etc.) There are many things about RQG that sound fantastic to me, and I eagerly await putting them to the test on the gaming table. What doesn't sound quite so fantastic is the apparent decision* to toss a lot of the RQ3 mechanical bathwater out in favour of the older RQ2 mechanics. Was RQ3 mechanically perfect? Of course not, it had many issues, although precious few of those issues were so bad that they could not be addressed by simple house rules. However, thinking back on it, I can't think of a single RQ3 game mechanic that was not (IMO) superior to the equivalent RQ2 mechanic. (And that's not even addressing the many mechanics that RQ3 provided that RQ2 never addressed at all.) [Of course after many years of playing RQ3 with an ever-evolving set of house rules I may well have forgotten some specific printed RQ3 rule that I "automatically" reverted to a RQ2 rule ... but I don't think so. Maybe Fatigue, which was too cumbersome (ha!) to be really workable, although the concept of it was fine and there was still room to fit it into the game in other ways (the idea of tracking how exhausted your character is in addition to how injured he is).] I don't expect RQG mechanics to change in any significant way now, of course, but as the game goes on I do hope we can get away from the apparent "RQ3 bad, RQ2 good" philosophy. As it is, I expect that any games of RQG that I run in the future will come with a whole new swag of house rules, many of which will be there simply to reintroduce aspects of RQ3 that I never had any complaints about. So my question boils down to: how much of RQ3 has actually made its way into RQG -- i.e., tweaks or additions to the RQ2 rules that clearly were sourced from RQ3? * I say "apparent" because I'm only picking up on the comments from those that have got the PDF and are quoting here and there.

Was my point not clear? The RQ3 chart for HP-allocation-per-location did not match the provided charts and calculations except at a few points. You calculated everything on the fly? Good for you, how does that alter the reality of what was presented in the rulebooks? "Here are the calculations, here's a handy summary in case you don't want to make those calculations for yourself, whoops the summary is wrong, so sorry." (Except that nobody bothered to say "sorry".) I did have access to a computer and had some basic programming skills, so I printed out my own summary and used it. Other people used the printed summary. Doesn't matter a fig either way, as long as you're consistent with your approach in an individual campaign. I have no idea what the relevance of enchantments or spells has to this. Yes, there are ways you can modify the number of HPs you have in a particular location. That has nothing to do with the inconsistency between what the rules said and the printed summary. Or to put it another way: the rules authors told you how to calculate HPs per location, and then demonstrated that they didn't know how to use those calculations. I'll note in passing that a consequence of using the calculations as opposed to the printed summary is that for "unusual" HP ranges (i.e., creatures with more HPs than a PC would typically have), the 0.25 for arms vs. 0.33 for most other locations in humanoids (or near humanoids) led to, say, giants with unusually spindly arms (and barrel chests). Not any sort of problem in game play, of course, but I vaguely recall that the printed summary tended to "even out" the locations a trifle in these unusual cases.

A statement that's always been largely true of the RQ designers (for any edition). The RQ3 "hit points per location" table, for instance, only agrees with the written rule occasionally. Use the table found in the rules, or create your own that matches the text of the rules? A matter of personal preference, obviously. Back in the day creating an accurate table required either a lot of patience in calculating and recording the results manually or access to a computer system and some programming skills. These days it's 5 minutes with a spreadsheet program.

What's the % in Lair for a Crimson Bat?

Sound seemed perfectly fine to me. I did wonder why the camera is pointed above their heads though. Cool bookcases ....

Jeff, you're pronouncing "Pendragon" wrong. Really wrong. "Pen-dragon" not "Pendra-gon".

In the absence of any official wording saying anything different, my attitude would be whoever achieved their success by the bigger margin would be the winner. If my skill is 30% and your skill is 35%, and I roll "29" and you roll "10", I've rolled higher but only with a margin of 1%, whereas you've achieved a margin of 25% -- in my view, a more substantial victory. A rule that says "highest roll breaks ties" is advantageous for people with higher skills (in general) but disadvantageous for people who actually roll better at the time the contest takes place -- and isn't that the point of the test in the first place? Otherwise you may as well just give the win to whoever has the highest skill level and not bother rolling dice at all.

Well, I guess I'd identify as an "old guard" type, and none of the groups I've ever played with instituted any such house rule. I haven't thought enough about the rule to worry about it to be honest. If the RQG rule is what it is, I'll probably go along with it. However, a house rule that I've contemplated in the past (but right now I can't remember if I ever actually implemented it) was to allow someone doing weapon training to do A & P training simultaneously, with whatever combination of weapon/shield/whatever that made sense for the character. So if you're training in 2H Axe, then you train with A & P at the same time (the actual percentages though would vary because of the differences between Manipulation and Agility bonuses). If you're training 1H Sword and normally use a shield, then you can train Sword A and Shield P at the same time. In all cases whatever skill % is highest would determine training time. (Alternately you could train weapon attack + Dodge simultaneously.) A little thought might yield some other "train two skills at the same time" combinations. Lance attack + Ride, for instance. If a player can convince me of a plausible (to me) combination, then I'd go with it ....

Now there's a mission worth pursuing in Prax! Mmm ... ice cream ....

Issue #17, p.87. The text reads "On average, 3 people a day in a typical RUNEQUEST (Avalon Hill) city of 10,000 will be suddenly and mysteriously transported to the 'God Plane', never to return." It doesn't matter how you slice it, that was simply a grossly inaccurate statement to make about the RQ3 rules, which IMO defeats the purpose of the cartoon: the humour is in finding rules that do seem kind of silly on the face of it, not just inventing silly rules. (There's another cartoon somewhere that points out that a relatively large proportion of combatants in a RQ battle will decapitate themselves, which is true and actually funny -- especially when you've seen it happen at the gaming table!) Even the most liberal interpretation of those encounter tables says nothing about being "transported" (although they can be interpreted that way, that's up to the GM, not a statement in the rules), they say nothing about the "God Plane" at all (that's a Gloranthan concept, not a "typical RQ3" concept), and just because you have a weird encounter while walking down a city street does not mean that you have automatically permanently disappeared from existence. (I don't think I'd play many games with a GM who consistently interpreted things in that way!) Of course, I never paid the slightest attention to the RQ3 encounter tables. I always thought them a couple of pages of wasted space. Not because I dislike random encounters; on the contrary, I'm usually entirely in favour of them. Those particular tables, however, never impressed me in the slightest. I've always felt that they were written under protest to fulfill the (perceived) obligation of having encounter tables in the rules, as opposed to something that might actually enhance the game with some random spice.

There's no "they" involved here. Somebody ("Lev Anderson") sent this in to Murphy's Rules as an established "fact" about the RQ3 rules. Nothing in those encounter tables says anything about "you have left the normal plane of existence" (though I agree that is a possible interpretation of the encounter result) and still less about "and you never get to return" (what determines that?). I also don't see where the "3 in 10,000" (per day the cartoon actually says, not per week as I indicated above) number comes from. There's a difference between "extrapolation" and "making stuff up and claiming that there's a rule for it". Mr Anderson appears to have done the latter (perhaps that was his house rule, and then he forgot that it was not a printed rule). Since the whole point of the cartoon is to show up weird and/or silly rules in games, it seems unfair in this particular instance. Any way, regardless of how you choose to interpret those tables, there appears to be nothing actually in print that says you can just randomly disappear, which is the only point I was trying to establish.

While perusing an old issue of Pyramid magazine I noticed that the "Murphy's Rules" gag page had a bit on RQ3 (that version cited specifically): it said that in an average town of about 10,000 people, every week 3 will typically vanish to the god plane, never to be seen again. While that sounds kind of amusing, I guess, given the real world probability of people disappearing and never seen again it doesn't sound that strange to me. I suppose the statement that they are specifically "vanishing to the god plane" and the implication that it's just happening randomly, so it might happen to your character at any time is the source of the humour? Any way ... what I don't get is where this statistic is coming from? It's stated as being a part of the RQ3 rules, but I can't think where. AFAIK the "god plane" is only even mentioned in Book 5 (the Glorantha booklet) and I can't see anything there about random disappearances. (Although to be honest, random disappearances to the god plane does sound kind of typical for Glorantha, although perhaps not at the rate of 3 in 10,000 per week!) I flipped through the other books but couldn't spot anything. Does anyone have any clue as to where this strange statistic has come from?

Not this RQ grognard. I think Feats are a profoundly useful RPG concept, and a great way of customising characters who might otherwise appear like clones. Of course, it requires that the Feat system be done well and integrated correctly into the base game system.